Translation Guide

Thanks to a new website I came across recently – www.wplang.org – anyone who needs guidance in building a multi-lingual WordPress website can find what they need here.

I found this most important because there are tons of websites that try and guide you in building a multi-lingual website, but very few of those websites discuss all the different pieces required to build these types of websites. Even after I had built Google Language Translator, I still had no true understanding of how to build multi-lingual websites. The process of finding accurate information was difficult – I had to spend tons of time finding out information because my assumptions about translation were completely based upon inaccurate information I had heard. I had to change my thinking about translation and understand that several pieces are required to come together in order to translate a website. And finally, after days and days of constant frustration and research, I was able to understand the process.

The fact is, relying on a plugin to build a truly professional, comprehensive, multi-linqual website is not easy. And contrary to what I have always assumed, installing language files for your particular language DOES NOT mean that you can automatically display your pages and posts in your native language! Although language files do play a large part of a multi-lingual website, translations still need to be provided by the website owner, and this means spending time to create manual translations of your website content. Of course, there are auto-translation plugins that you can use to spin-off these translations, but you still need to create separate pages and posts for each of your pages, and then decide how these translations will be served up to your website visitors.

Enter the WP Multi-lingual Guide below:

I invite you to learn about translation in a more comprehensive way. That is the only way that I could understand it – and I still have a long way to go. I would like to thank Irena Domingo of www.wplang.org for providing this information and allowing me to share it on this website to help our users.

It is likely that some of the information in the guide might prompt some questions that arise for your particular situation. If this is the case, do your best to find some of the answers on your own, but please don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions.